Saying it was “forced to act,” Beijing cast the move as a response to a U.S. threat, reported last week in The Washington Post, to raise the proposed tariff rate on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods from 10 percent to 25 percent.

The United States and China are in an escalating trade war in which the two sides have already imposed tariffs on roughly $50 billion of each other’s goods and which has raised tension between the world’s two largest economies. The timing of Friday’s announcement hinted at that conflict. The news came just after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Singapore.

Lu Xiang, an expert on U.S.-China trade at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said the tensions had reached a “critical moment.”

“The trade war is a tactic by Trump, but if it eventually evolves into a strategic confrontation, the result will undoubtedly be disastrous,” he said.

In early rounds, the United States and China went threat for threat, matching $50 billion and then $100 billion salvos.

President Donald Trump in June asked U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer to draft a plan for a 10 percent tariff on $200 billion in Chinese imports. China cannot match that dollar for dollar, but it vowed to fight back using “qualitative and quantitative” measures.

The escalation has business leaders on both sides worried about where this will end up.

“I sense that we’re seeing a hardening of attitudes on both sides,” said Jacob Parker, vice president of China relations at the U.S. China Business Council. It’s a “race to the bottom that will harm American consumers, farmers and U.S. industry.”

Parker added: “Enough is enough. It’s time to stop imposing nonconstitutive tariff action and resolve the very real issues.”

The Washington Post’s Luna Lin and Amanda Erickson contributed to this report.

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